评论
打印
One day weeks afterward, I was standing by the door of the shoe store while my mother tried on shoes, and I heard a woman running past the store call, "Mike!" I was suddenly convinced that this woman must be Mike's mother. I was now running out of the store—thinking only that in another minute I would see him.
几周后的某一天，我陪母亲去鞋店试鞋。当我站在鞋店门口时，听见一个女人跑过商店，喊着“迈克”，突然间我认为她就是迈克的母亲。我跑出了鞋店，希望马上就可以见到他。
The woman had caught up with a boy about five years old. A common name. A stupid flat-faced child with dirty blond hair. My heart was beating in big thumps, like howls happening in my chest.
那个女人撵上了一个大约5岁的小男孩儿。一个太普通的名字。那是一个傻傻的男孩儿，有一张扁平的脸，脏脏的金发。我的心咚咚地跳个不停，就像是胸腔在咆哮。
Sunny had met my bus in Uxbridge that summer of 1979. She was a bright-faced woman, with silvery brown curly hair caught back by unmatched combs on either side of her face. Even when she put on weight—which she had done—she looked not matronly but majestically girlish.
1979年的夏天，赛妮在欧克斯桥的客车站接我。她是一个精气神十足的女子，银棕色的卷发用不对称的梳子别在头的两侧。即便当她发胖时——现在她确实是胖了——她看上去也不像是结了婚的女人，而像是带有几分庄重的女孩子。
She swept me into her life as she had always done, telling me that she had thought she was going to be late, because Claire had got a bug in her ear that morning and had had to be taken to the hospital to have it flushed out. Then the dog threw up on the kitchen step. Johnston was making the boys clean it up because they had wanted a dog.
她还是像往常一样，把我卷入她的生活，告诉我她还以为自己会迟到，因为女儿克莱尔早上把臭虫放进自己的耳朵，她不得不带她到医院把虫子冲洗出来。后来，狗又在她家厨房的台阶上呕吐，约翰斯顿便让孩子们把它冲洗干净，因为是他们想要养的狗。
"So suppose we go someplace nice and quiet and get drunk and never go back there?" she said. "We have to, though. Johnston invited a friend whose wife and kids are away in Ireland, and they want to go and play golf."
“本想我们找一个安静漂亮的地方，喝上几杯，不醉不归？”她说道，“可是，我们不得不回去，约翰斯顿邀请了一个朋友，恰好那个朋友的妻子和孩子都回爱尔兰了，所以他俩要去打高尔夫球。”
Sunny and I had been friends in Vancouver years before. Our pregnancies had dovetailed, so that we had managed with one set of maternity clothes. In my kitchen or in hers, once a week or so, distracted by our children and sometimes reeling for lack of sleep, we stoked ourselves up on strong coffee and cigarettes and launched out on a rampage of talk—about our marriages, our fights, our personal deficiencies, our interesting and discreditable motives, our forgone ambitions. We read Jung at the same time and tried to keep track of our dreams. During that time of life that is supposed to be a reproductive daze, with the woman's mind all swamped by maternal juices, we were still compelled to discuss Simone de Beauvofr and Arthur Koestler and "The Cocktail Party".
几年前在温哥华，赛妮和我就是朋友。我们俩的怀孕期正好前后相接，所以我们能够共用一套孕妇服。我们大约每周都要在我的厨房或她的厨房聚会一次。孩子总是不断地打扰我们，有时我们还会因为缺觉而感到头晕目眩，于是我们就用大量的浓咖啡和香烟给自己提神，开始天南海北地聊天，所谈的话题无所不包：我们的婚姻、奋斗、个人的不足、既有趣又有些丢脸的动机，以及我们曾经有过的理想抱负。我们同时读荣格的书，试图记录分析我们曾做过的梦。生命中的那段时光本应是忙于照看孩子，大脑处在一种产后带来的恍惚忙碌中，可我们却讨论着西蒙娜·德·波伏娃、亚瑟·库斯勒以及《鸡尾酒会》。
